Daily News

Uncertainty from presidential election puts Copts on edge.

Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood react to speeches at a gathering to celebrate a premature victory for their presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square in Cairo June 19. Egyptian candidates Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq contested in the second round of voting for the country's president held over two days of voting last weekend. Despite official results not having been announced, the Muslim Brotherhood are claiming victory for their presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi.

– Daniel Berehulak /Getty Images

The fact that not all the votes had been counted before Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for the Egyptian presidency, declared victory on Monday was of little comfort to the country’s sizeable Christian minority, which fears an Islamic takeover.

The uncertainty surrounding the election — by Tuesday, both Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, the former prime minister and Morsi’s old-guard competitor, said they had won — has left Egyptians, and especially the country’s 8 million to 10 million Coptic Christians, deeply worried about the future.

The presidential runoff was the final step in an exhausting months-long election process that followed the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak...READ MORE

President Obama responds to a question from Neil Munro of the Daily Caller after he interruped the president while Obama delivered remarks about the Department of Homeland Security's recent announcement about deportation of illegal immigrants in the Rose Garden at the White House June 15. With the DREAM Act unable to gain traction in Congress, Obama announced that his administration would stop deporting some young people who came to U.S. as children of illegal immigrants.

– Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Immigrant advocates are cautious, but they see signs of hope for comprehensive immigration reform, given recent political developments.

On June 15, President Barack Obama announced a new policy that the federal government will not deport some young undocumented immigrants, which could help him in an election year with Latino voters, while putting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on the defensive.

The president issued his policy just three days after 150 evangelical Christian leaders endorsed an overhaul of immigration policy and called for a bipartisan solution that transcends the polarization, name-calling and misrepresentations...READ MORE

True Freedom: On Protecting Human Dignity and Religious Liberty eBook released June 19.

NEW YORK CITY--Society faces a choice between true human dignity and a false concept of freedom culminating in the “culture of death,” New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan explains in his new eBook.

This inhumane culture springs from “deeply rooted social, philosophical and ethical tendencies that, unfortunately, often find their expression in our laws and in our attitudes toward others,” the cardinal writes in True Freedom: On Protecting Human Dignity and Religious Liberty, released June 19. Published by Random House Digital, True Freedom is available for 99 cents.

“To this culture of death,” he writes, “the Church boldly and joyfully promotes the culture of life.”

Family is king in the pioneering animation studio’s first fairy tale, a rare mother-daughter story that charts an unconventionally traditional moral path.

For Pixar fans, Brave marks a crucial watershed. The studio’s first fairy-tale film and first feature with a female protagonist, it’s also Pixar’s first non-sequel since being bought by Disney. Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 were both products of post-purchase Pixar — and, as well done as Toy Story 3 was, the willingness to keep going back to the same well (combined with the mediocrity of Cars 2) raised disquieting questions about whether a Disney-owned Pixar still had the vision and daring for unconventional projects like Wall-E or Up.

Speed bumps on Brave’s path to the screen raised further concerns. First came word that the original title, The Bear and the Bow, had been scuttled for another...READ MORE

Ontario government throws parochial schools ‘under a bus.’

OTTAWA — Canada’s largest province is forcing its taxpayer-supported Catholic schools to let homosexual students start their own clubs.

The Accepting Schools Act received final reading by the provincial parliament on June 5, with the support of the governing Liberals and their allies in the socialist New Democratic Party. The Catholic bishops and school trustees opposed it, along with various parents’ rights groups and the Evangelical Federation of Canada, but teachers groups, including the English Catholic Teachers Association and homosexual-rights groups such as EGALE Canada, supported it.

“Today is about saying to Ontario students, ‘You can be who you are. You will be safe and...READ MORE

June 17 address focused on God's love and his plan for his Kingdom via parables.

God is the prime mover in the story of salvation, Pope Benedict XVI taught on June 17, as he discussed Christ's parables about the similarity between the Kingdom of God and the growth of seeds.

“The message is clear,” the Pope told pilgrims in his midday Angelus address. “The Kingdom of God, even if it requires our cooperation, is, firstly, a gift of the Lord, a grace that precedes man and his works.”

“Our small force, apparently impotent before the problems of the world, if placed in that of God, is not afraid of obstacles, because it is certain of the victory of the Lord.”

This is “the miracle of God’s love” that should make us “optimistic, despite the difficulties, sufferings and...READ MORE